David Penberthy: Athletes must teach kids to take risks, not avoid them

We all agree our kids need to spend more time exploring and less time on screens, yet injured footballer Ollie Wines is being bagged out instead of held up as the good role model he is, writes David Penberthy.

2019 Australians of the Year Dr Richard Harris and Craig Challen pose for photos at the 2019 Australian of the Year Awards at The National Arboretum in Canberra. Picture: AAP

Much has been written and said about the so-called cotton wool generation and how we are mollycoddling our kids into a world marked by anxiety, obesity and an unquenchable obsession with technology.

For kids growing up in the West, unstructured play in the wild has been replaced with endless hours on the Xbox.

Whereas I used to meet my mates after school to go bike riding on dirt tracks in a local national park, kids my eldest son’s age are more likely to meet up after school in cyberspace to play Fortnite.

Last year’s Thai cave rescue provided an extraordinary counterpoint to the paranoia that now informs parenting in the West. I’m certainly not suggesting that letting a group of primary school kids wander unsupervised into a submerged sea cave at low tide in the Thai jungle is the ideal model for free play.

Nor is the man who spearheaded the remarkable rescue of those kids, Adelaide anaesthetist Dr Richard Harris, who last week along with his cave diving buddy and fellow rescuer Craig Challen was awarded the 2019 Australian of the Year.

Cave divers Craig Challen and Dr Richard Harris were jointly awarded Australians of the Year. Picture: Gary Ramage

But interviewing Dr Harris this week, he made the excellent point that here in the West the pendulum has swung so far the other way that many children are simply taking no risks anymore.

Hearteningly, he intends to use his position as Australian of the Year to advocate that we wind back on the screen time and get back in the outdoors, leading the active and free-spirited lives that were commonplace a generation or two ago.

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“I think about how amazing my childhood was,” Harris told me. “I was lucky to have parents who were very much into the outdoors and taking us on adventures, lots of small boating and fishing and snorkelling, camping, that sort of stuff.

“I really want to try and inspire kids to get out and about, get them off their screens. I know talking to my own kids they feel a bit trapped by social media and they’re kind of jealous that we grew up in a time that we were free of it.

“It is the way young people communicate these days so we have to allow for that but I think there could be a balance struck and we need to get them off their screens and get outside and build up a bit of confidence and resilience that comes with adventuring and taking a few risks.”

As if to illustrate his point, at the same time Dr Harris was making these welcome observations, one of Australia’s pre-eminent footballers found himself on the receiving end of some turbocharged mollycoddling over the fact he had accidentally injured himself while taking part in a sporting activity he has loved since he was a child.

Port Adelaide midfielder Ollie Wines is a child of the Murray. He grew up in the Victorian border town of Echuca and was waterskiing and wakeboarding while us city folk were still learning to walk.

He’s a gun footballer, a terrific bloke, and is fancied to be captain or co-captain of his AFL club this year. He will miss the first game or two of this season because, last week, he broke his shoulder while wakeboarding off the back of a speedboat on the Murray.

Port Adelaide footballer Ollie Wines posted this photo of his wakeboarding trip on the Murray River with friends. Picture: Instagram

The circumstances surrounding Wines’s injury prompted a round of criticism, some of it bordering on vitriol, as to how stupid and selfish his actions apparently were.

The argument goes that as an elite athlete who earns some $370k a year he has an obligation to his team and its supporters to keep himself shipshape for match day by avoiding unnecessary risks.

RELATED: Ollie Wines’ injury is bad luck not bad behaviour

Wines was chastised by some for wakeboarding on the cusp of the season; others went further and said he would never go wakeboarding at all if he had any commitment to his club.

If we follow these criticisms to their logical conclusion, we might as well draw up a list of prohibited activities for our athletes so they can avoid doing themselves a mischief.

No rock-climbing, no surfing, no darts because it’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye, no running outside of an oval in case they roll an ankle on a dodgy gutter or a stray rock.

And, on match-day, two of the players could be appointed lolly-pop men, primary school-style, to usher the other lads safely across the road towards the MCG. Taking our cue from Doug Walters, the only permitted extra-curricular activity would be Canasta, only without the beer and smokes.

The other thing — what’s Wines’ salary got to do with any of this? Do we let the rookies or the journeymen go wakeboarding because they’re only getting $150K?

Paddy Ryder and Ollie Wines face of during a Port Adelaide Training camp in Noosa last year. Picture: Sarah Reed

The thing that truly confounded me about the Ollie Wines controversy is that there were two other players this week who will miss the opening game of season 2019 for different reasons. Carlton’s Alex Fasolo broke his arm while having a drunken playfight with his mates on Australia Day, and the Adelaide Crows Patrick Wilson got done for DUI.

It was a telling sign of the times that there was more media and public discussion this week around Wines’ actions than Fasolo’s or Wilson’s, such is our desire to turn everyone into risk-averse robots.

As the head of the AFL Players Association Patrick Dangerfield said, players are human beings and they need to live their lives and let off some steam.

They are by definition physical people who are hardwired to push themselves and take some risks.

We could all learn from them. Rather than chastising Wines, he should wear his busted shoulder as a badge of honour, and we should hail him as a role model in our increasingly indolent, indoors world.

@penbo